Contemplations regarding modern society, which is nothing new.

I’m too old for this, dag nab’it! All this new, fancy-fangled tek-noe-low-jickle hooey! Personal compooters and little palm-pilots. Y’ da hell’s it called a “pilot” anyway? It don’t fly nothin’. I r’member when things made sense. Good sense. Gun control meant holdin’ the grip wit both hands, and a “point-and-click interface” was talkin’ ’bout a Smith and Wesson. Life was sure simple back in the day. The good ole days wussen a’called good for no reason, ya’ know. ‘Cheese’ was bought in bricks and wouldn’t get’cha in trouble with the law, and a sleepin’ pill came in the shape of a tall bottle wrapped up in a paper bag. Yessir, that there was a reg-u-lar antidepressant – not so nice as a Miss Cindy-Lou a’crossin a puddle, though. Whoo-wee, I can feel my heart a’palpatatin’ just r’memberin’ those slender little ankles as she raised up that dress. Not that I was a’lookin’, mind ya’. It was just an honest mistake, o’ course.

Okay, so maybe I stretch, but I really do grow increasingly distraught with our “Brave New World.” We aren’t really any more civilized than when we started; just better at hiding our incivility. Core concepts never change, and, at the core of the issue, is mankind, that one incurable disease. Let’s face it, we corrupt all that we touch and touch all that we would be better off to leave be. It’s an internal problem that resides on an individual basis inside every person: you, me, John Doe, Susie Q, the Joneses, and all of this deprave humanity. What’s worse, possibly worst? Despite our tendency to err, we are capable of such incredible good. The rub is this: we become so obsessed with our own good that we sacrifice the good of everyone else in our own pursuit of what we think will finally be happiness. We see what we want, long to have it, and are too stiff-necked to give up our self-destruction.

“The lust, the flesh, the eyes, and the pride of life drain the life right out of me.”